Saturday, November 16, 2013

On Friday afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) gave one of the most mind boggling reasons for the House not voting on the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill that was passed in June because — wait for it — he didn’t want to “repeat the mistakes” of Obamacare. Whatever that means.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) argued that a vote on immigration reform should occur by the end of the year, because it can garner 218 votes.

Think Progress reports, “Cantor responded that Senate Democrats and White House officials have been unwilling to talk and instead insist on a “my way or the highway kind of mode of operation.”

That sounds so familiar. In fact, in August, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) — one of the most hardline immigration opponents — called reform “a waste of time,” and said that the House should focus its attention on Benghazi instead.

HOYER: Bring it to the floor and see if the House thinks it’s a bad bill. See if the House believes that it’s a bill that is not worthy to be considered and passed as a fixing of a broken immigration system … He has the power to bring that bill to the floor.CANTOR: We don’t want a repeat of what’s going on now with Obamacare. That bill, constructed as it is by the Senate, last-minute-ditch effort to get it across the finish line … let’s be mindful, Madam Speaker, of what happens when you put together a bill like Obamacare and the real consequences to millions of Americans right now, scared that they’re not going to even have health care insurance that they have today come January 1.[...] I’d say to the gentleman again. The track record of this administration and the majority in the Senate has indicated an unwillingness to sit down and talk. They’ve not done so, certainly the White House has not done so on the immigration issue, did not do so on the health care issue, and again it doesn’t help the American people for their insistence on a “my way or the highway” kind of mode of operation.

After an insane amount of attempts to repeal Obamacare, what Cantor is saying is that he will block any measure Obama supports because he lost the fight to destroy Affordable Health Care.

And also because today ends in a Y.

Cantor refuses to do more than one thing at a time, and the only thing he has tried to accomplish has taken years, and he’s failed over and over again. It also cost this economy a lot of money. A lot.